Prabhakar played a key role in passing the 2023 AI Executive Order, which sets rules for tech companies to make AI safer and more transparent (even if it relies on voluntary participation). Before serving in President Biden’s Cabinet, she held several government positions, from pushing for domestic semiconductor production to leading DARPA, the Pentagon’s famed research department.
I had the chance to sit down with Prabhakar earlier this month. We discussed the risks of AI, immigration policies, the CHIPS Act, public trust in science, and how all of this could change under Trump.
The change in administration comes at a chaotic time for AI. Trump’s team has not presented a clear thesis for how it will handle artificial intelligence, but many members want to see this executive order dismantled. Trump said this in July, endorsing the Republican platform which says the decree “hinders innovation in AI and imposes radical left-wing ideas on the development of this technology”. Powerful industry players, like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have said they support the move. However, Elon Musk will complicate this narrative.which has for years expressed fears about AI doomsday scenarios and supports certain regulations aimed at promoting AI safety. No one really knows exactly what’s next, but Prabhakar has a lot of thoughts on what’s happened so far.
For his insights on the most important developments in AI under the last administration and what could happen under the next, read my conversation with Arati Prabhakar.
Deeper learning
These Minecraft AI Characters Did Weirdly Human Things All Alone
The video game Minecraft is increasingly popular as a testing ground for AI models and agents. This is a trend that Altera has recently adopted. It released up to 1,000 software agents at a time, powered by large language models (LLM), to interact with each other. With a simple nudge via text message, they developed a remarkable range of personality traits, preferences, and specialized roles, without any further input from their human creators. Remarkably, they spontaneously made friends, invented jobs, and even spread religion.
Why it’s important: AI agents can perform tasks and demonstrate autonomy, taking initiative in digital environments. This is another example of how the behaviors of such agents, with minimal prompting from humans, can be both impressive and downright bizarre. The people who work to bring agents into the world have bold ambitions for them. Altera founder Robert Yang sees Minecraft experiments as a first step toward large-scale “AI civilizations” with agents able to coexist and work alongside us in digital spaces. “The true power of AI will be unleashed when we have truly autonomous agents that can collaborate at scale,” says Yang. Read more from Niall Firth.
Bits and bytes
OpenAI explores advertising